ESB and Rogue One

     I was so sad when I heard that Carrie Fisher had died.  I wrote this post before her passing.

Written on 12-22-16.

     It’s Belinda and Amanda’s birthday today.  They are 49 now.  Belinda and I have just over one full month where we will be the same age, but I will ruin that by turning 50 on January 29th.  We are up at the cabin home again, and Becca’s boyfriend Matt is here, too.  The twins are stirring after taking a nap together here in the living room.  A was on the floor (her typical spot) while B and Danielle shared the couch.  

     Danielle now has the couch all to herself.  Eric and Kyle might come up later, but it will probably be Kyle all by himself.  Eric is busy getting his newest Big-O store going in Farmington, and he hopes to have it open by the end of this month.  We got to tour it yesterday, and it’s on track to be open by the date he has in mind.  We are going to help him on Tuesday by moving a bunch of tires into place onto the new wooden storage racks he is building.

     In other news, we celebrated Christmas in Lakewood early by combining the opening weekend of the new Star Wars movie, Rogue One, with our extended family Christmas.  It was great!  The movie was...
fabulous, and it was special for me to be able to once again have the “original gang” together.  When I said goodbye to Guy this time, I said, “Life is just a string of Star Wars movies.”  

     That is especially true now that Disney has taken over the franchise.  The next two movies expected to come out will be Episode 8 and another stand-alone movie based on Han Solo during his younger years.  

     This latest movie, Rogue One, the first of the stand-alones, was in my opinion the second best Star Wars movie ever made.  The first is definitely The Empire Strikes Back, but a big reason that one is my favorite is because it’s the one the “original gang” and I saw on opening day at the Cooper Theater more than three decades ago, and that’s a special memory I will never forget.  

     When each character appeared on the screen for the first time, the entire audience erupted in applause and euphoria.  When it was all over, the audience applauded once more, and it felt more like we were attending a concert or a play than a movie.  Didn’t we know that the cast would not/could not come back for an encore?  That we would have to pay to be able to enjoy it again?  We didn’t care; we kept clapping anyway.  We were all impressed and entertained.  Or, as Darth Vader says to Luke in that very movie, “Most impressive.”

     The Empire Strikes Back is my favorite for many other reasons.  Our heroes are in constant danger, so it’s filled with tension.  It starts with a bang!  The Hoth battle is one of the craziest, creative, and exciting battle scenes I had ever seen up to that point, even surpassing the Death Star battle at the end of A New Hope.  Heck, the scene where the snow speeder goes over the drifts looking for Luke and Han gave me a stomach in my throat feeling.  

     The asteroid chase soon follows, and I was swept up in it all, completely engrossed in their escape attempt.  Their getaway gave us all an escape from reality, too.  As the Millennium Falcon carried its passengers into the deadly asteroids, I was carried away by the music of John Williams and the excitement of it all.  I wanted to be in the cockpit, and at times, I felt like I was.  

     Then Han and Leia share the best movie kiss of all time, and I know that I am biased due to my having a little bit of a crush on Carrie Fisher.  I even like the corny dialogue.  

     “My hands are dirty.”

     “My hands are dirty, too.”

     “I happen to like nice men.”

     “I’m a nice man.”

     It’s so simple, but it’s all done so well.  They definitely had the chemistry, and it makes even more sense now that Carrie Fisher has revealed that she and Harrison Ford had an affair during the filming of Star Wars.

     I could go on.  Okay, I will.  We meet Yoda.  Cloud City.  Boba Fett.  Luke faces Darth Vader unprepared.  Darth Vader drops a truth bomb on Luke.  Although, when I first heard it, it didn’t even resonate or make sense to me.  I just thought he was saying that to be deceptive and evil.  Turns out it was true.  Han has the greatest line near the end of the movie, though, telling Leia, “I know.” 

     The escape at the finale keeps the suspense going.  It’s movie magic.  It works.

     Rogue One brings Star Wars movie magic back.  The Force Awakens did, too, but this one has more depth, more danger.  The Empire is immediate, scary, growing, and ever present, especially on Jedha with that Star Destroyer looming over the city like a dominant animal standing over its prey.  I expected to see the city roll over to show its soft under belly.  Rogue One has plenty of action, too, and it has Donnie Yen aka Ip Man.  To see him battling stormtroopers (as a blind man) was surreal and… awesome!  

     The action builds to the final battle at a perfect pace.  I am thinking that the more danger, the better the Star Wars movie.  Watching the street battle in the city was reminiscent of watching a movie like Blackhawk Down.  The dirty, roughly sewn, potato-type sacks pulled over the heads of captors screamed terrorism, in my opinion.  I half-expected to see a beheading during my first viewing.  

     As the movie continues, it just gets better and better.  I could go on.  Okay, I will.  K2-SO is a refreshing type of comedic relief.  Huge space battle.  Women pilots.  AT-AT Walkers on beaches.  Darth Vader returns.  Red 5 dies to pave the way for Luke.  I enjoyed many of the other nods to the earlier Star Wars movies, too, like the wanted men bumping into Gyn on Jedha and the pilots from the original Death Star battle showing up in this movie’s finale.  

     The only really awkward nod to the earlier movies comes at the very end when we see a CG Leia.  I still have to stare at her to convince myself it’s supposed to be her.  They did so well reviving Grand Moff Tarkin digitally, but it just looks off and creepy with Leia’s character.

     I have seen it twice, and that’s another reason this movie is so great; I want to see it over and over again like I did with the original movies (except for Return of the Jedi).  Joe, Guy, and I chose to go see it for our second time on Sunday night after we had celebrated our family Christmas at the White Fence Farm.  If I don’t check my watch, that’s another sign that it’s a wonderful movie.  I never did either, and that was both times.  When we got to the part where Darth Vader dispatches rebel after rebel in an attempt to get to the stolen plans, I thought to myself that it couldn’t be this close to the end again already.  We plan on watching it again with Kyle and Becca this Friday.

Written on 12-23-16.

     Okay, the new plan is to see it on Saturday at 3:30.  Becca wants to take Matt to the Polar Express on the D&SNG, so she wanted to be certain they would have plenty of time to get there early.  That works out better, actually, because Rocky can now join us on Saturday.

     Eric did make it here yesterday, and we had a fantastic birthday celebration for the twins.  Danielle and I played Sequence.  I won.  Then she and I teamed up to play Becca and Matt after Matt had played a “learning” game with Becca.  Danielle and I won.  We had lasagna for dinner, and it was delicious.  We followed that up with a moist chocolate cake with white frosting that Kyle had baked.  We ended the evening on a high note after playing Scattergories together.  It was fun, because of the heated discussions and ensuing laughter when someone tried to defend his or her answers.  Eric did a better job this time, in my opinion, of coming up with not only some unique answers but also with some improved reasoning for those answers.  Matt and I actually both chose two of the same answers that I thought no-one else would think of: nettles and some other word we can’t remember.  Weird.  I thought that no-one else would think of those, but the guy from the U.K. did.

     Belinda and I are discussing right now whether to stay one more night tonight.  Danielle can ride home with Becca and Matt, the two remaining Edgerton people.  Danielle can also go shopping for the Christmas dinner for us.  The snow falling outside right now matches the look of the mist under the lights at the hot springs at Ojo.  The flakes are minuscule and great in number.  I’m mesmerized by it.